Diet Time

“Baby, Some Gain Must Fall”

Gaining weight is easy.
Look at all of the temptations out there and I don’t mean the singing group.
I am talking about fried foods, processed sugars, doughnuts, cream pies, margaritas, beer, wine, tequila shots, pasta, ice cream, cocktail parties, (OOOOH) the odor of
“sin-namon” taking you back in time to cookies, chocolate cakes, the sweet smells of youth.
But no more, turn your back on delectable delights and instead turn to the rigors of Tofu, bean sprouts, black bean burgers on paper thin wheat rolls, protein shakes, boiled or broiled skinless chicken, water by the gallons, bars of fiber, protein chunks that taste like bad cardboard and vegetables, picked fresh and steamed without butter followed by the hollow taste of, “You lost four tenths of one pound in one week”.
Four tenths of one pound, “Is that what I heard”?
I know that one pound is equal to 3500 calories. Further I am told I need to reduce my intake to 1500 calories a day to lose two pounds a week.
I have done that and track it rigorously.
I exercise every day and I would guess I expend about 1000 calories a day in exercise beyond my basal metabolic needs, so it appears I am burning an excess 7000 calories a week.
That alone is two pounds of loss related to exercise plus the two related to diet so I should be losing four pounds a week instead of four tenths of one pound.
I am experiencing a “Factor of Ten” issue here.
This is a little like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole.
It is in fact a repudiation of the First Law of Thermodynamics (when energy changes type and leaves a system, it takes its mass with it).
That law states that energy and mass are constant, that is, in perfect balance, if mass is lost (Exercise or less energy than needed to maintain) an appropriate amount of energy is generated (heat, sweat) and if energy is converted to mass (food) an appropriate amount of energy is lost (cow dies).
This would not appear to be the finding in my case.
As I figure it I am running a 14,000 calorie a week deficit, divide that by 3500 and you are left with the obvious loss of four pounds.
In my case I lost four tenths of a pound running a 14,000 calorie deficit which means to lose one pound would require a 35,000 calorie deficit and a four pound weight loss would mean I would have to go in the hole by 140,000 calories.
Here comes that “Factor of Ten” again.
It took forty years to put all of this weight on and it now seems it will take four hundred years to get it off.
So if I determine to go to the gym every day for the next 146,000 days I should get it done, because “Baby, Some Gain Must Fall”.